e in the collector's eye, irrespective of its value in the
dealer's catalogue. Of his collection before it was moved from the
house on Evanston Avenue, adjoining the Waller lot, his friend Julian
Ralph wrote:
"He had cabinets and closets filled with the wreckage of England, New
England, Holland, and Louisiana; walls littered with mugs, and prints,
and pictures, plates, and warming-pans; shelves crowded with such
things, and mantel-pieces likewise loaded, through two stories of his
house. All were curios of value, or else beauty, for he was no
ignoramus in his madness. His den above stairs, where he sat surrounded
by a great and valuable collection of first editions and other prized
books, was part of the museum. There hung the axe Mr. Gladstone gave
him at Hawarden, and the shears that Charles A. Dana used during a
quarter of a century. These two prizes he cherished most. He had been
to Mr. Dana and begged the shears, receiving the promise that he should
have them left to him in Mr. Dana's will. He waited five years, grew
impatient, past endurance, and then came on to New York and got the
shears from Paul Dana."
To his new home, which he christened "The Sabine Farm," were moved all
the accumulated treasures of his mania for curiosities and antiques. "I
do not think he thought much of art," wrote Edward Everett Hale in his
introduction to "A Little Book of Profitable Tales"; and the motley,
albeit fascinating, aggregation of rare and outlandish chattels in
Eugene Field's house justified that conclusion. Of what the world calls
art, whether the creation of the brush, the chisel, the loom, or the
potter's oven, he had the most rudimentary conception. His eye was ever
alert for things queer, rare, and "out of print." Of these he was a
connoisseur beyond compare, a collector without a peer. He valued
prints, not for their beauty or the art of the engraver, but for some
peculiarity in the plate, or because of the difficulties overcome in
their "comprehension." He knew all that was to be known of the
delightful art of the binder, but his most cherished specimen would
always be one where a master had made some slip in tooling. For
oddities and rarities in all the range of the collector's fever, from
books and prints to pewter mugs and rag dolls, his mania was omnivorous
and catholic. And strange as it may seem, with his mania was mingled a
shrewd appreciation of the commercial side of it all. This is what Mr.
Ralph means wh
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